Secrets, so many secrets. Pounding, bursting, burning, thrumming, churning through the air, invading her mind, making her scream and scream and scream. The tenor of the thoughts were unfamiliar, the voices indistinguishable, combining together into a pulsating, violent mass that attacked her relentlessly.
"I'll give you your medicine," Simon says, and she wants to tell him she doesn't need it, that she doesn't want to go down, down, down, smothered, suffocated by the blackness that was nothing like the freedom of the black. But she can't say no; her mind is too full of other people's thoughts, other people's emotions, other people's secrets that she can't gather herself enough to say what it is that she thinks.
She gets to know them, and it gets better. But it also gets worse.
Simon Tam, brother, surgeon- tries to fix everything, tries to mend and heal and make everything new, can't understand that some things cannot be restored. It's the doctor in him, his thoughts are a shade of pearlescent white- pure, wholesome, determined to do what is right at all costs. He loves her, she can feel it in every beat of his heart, every thrum of his thoughts. She is at the center of his brain, but he grieves for the sister he lost. He doesn't always think of her as River Tam, he sometimes thinks of her as a different person entirely. He misses their games, misses her smile. His is the first voice she is able to unravel from the tangled mess inside her broken brain. Simon's thoughts hurt.
Malcolm Reynolds, Captain Daddy- father to his crew, lover to his ship, thinks in brown. Brown like the earth, like the rich dirt of the ranch of his childhood, brown like the Browncoats. His thoughts are painful, the screams of fallen comrades and fire screaming through the dark sky over The Battle of Serenity lurking beneath the brown. The threads of his thoughts are strong, like steel, like iron; his is perhaps the most easily distinguishable. His brown threads dance with threads of gold; circling around one another, never touching. He doesn't think he's good enough. He doesn't understand that it is the earth that shapes the glittery bits; he has nothing to prove.
Inara Serra is composed of glittering gold, gold that is beginning to turn to brass. She is mother- caring, kind- her thoughts bearing a tone as lovely as the sun setting over a calm stream. But there is an undercurrent to those thoughts, a current of fear and denial, of resistance to the inevitable tarnishing. The gold will turn to brass as the sickness takes hold, will weaken her, destroy her beauty, will then turn that brass to black. She hides it, hides it from everyone like she hides her syringes and medicine under her bed, especially from the threads of brown. She will not allow gold to dance with brown because she knows she will fade to black, thinks it will be easier for him to circle rather than waltz.
It is Kaylee's thoughts that dance through her head, twirling and soaring in shades of pink and chrome. Kaylee who wears her heart on her sleeve and longs to pull the white into a tango. She thinks in terms of gears and motors, like Simon she thinks she can fix anything and everything. But unlike Simon, she does not heal with a syringe, she heals with a smile. The pink and chrome thoughts have no secrets, have nothing to hide. They are light and pretty things, floating like a butterfly, knowing nothing of the bitter taste of resentment. They are River's favorites. They are the only ones that don't confuse her or make her hurt.
Zoe and Wash's thoughts overlap, so caught up in one another, so tied emotionally that their thoughts are both in shades of orange. Zoe is good at keeping her thoughts private, but River still hears them- quiet things, sad but happy. Like the brown threads, the burnt orange ones bear the weight of regret, are attached to the ghosts of Serenity. But the bright orange thoughts of Wash overwhelm the feelings of loss, fill in her cracks with happiness. His thoughts are bright and kind, constantly whirling, never ceasing, thinking about long brown legs and planet coordinates. Occasionally, his bright orange will go greenish with envy when he looks at the brown and burnt orange together, and it is through this that River learns his secret: he is worried that his soul mate will abandon him for Captain Daddy.
And then there is Jayne Cobb, a killer and mama's boy who thinks in shades of gray. He is cruel, cruel enough to be made of black; his thoughts pulse with thoughts of sex and death and he is equally aroused by both. He thinks of things she has never imagined before- of painted whores tied up and gagged and gasping as he takes them roughly enough to cause pain, yet they pretend to feel pleasure because money changed hands. But beneath that is a streak of kindness and tenderness, diluting the black, turning it to gray. His thoughts linger on his mother, Radiant, on Matty, on the family he left behind on the backwater dustbowl of a planet he was born on. He tries to hide the kindness, but River sees, River knows.
She knows too much about Book, whose name isn't really Book. Derril Book is dead somewhere, his bones rotting in an unmarked grave, murdered by the man she knows. The Shepherd who is not a shepherd, not really, who only became one after years of killing and killing and killing… Book who is not Book thinks in red. Red for the blood he has shed, red for the blood of the savior who he believes has redeemed him. She will keep his secrets.
It is better because she can untangle the mess of their voices in their mind, is no longer driven crazy by their passions and their thoughts because once she was able to isolate the threads, she could keep them at bay. But it is worse because she knows their secrets, secrets that they don't want known, secrets that she doesn't want to have to keep within herself until she feels like she will burst from the pain of them. They look at her, sometimes, with fear. Not because they worry she will hurt them, but because they are worried about how much she knows.
It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, to know so much, to be unable to share her burden. She doesn't want to see the threads, doesn't want to feel their pain, doesn't want to know their secrets. Sometimes, it gets to be too much and she rocks and rocks and rocks, crying and repeating the curses she hears them say, praying that the hands of blue will pay for making her see. For making her kill. For making her crazy.
And then Simon, dear Simon, with his swirling thoughts of white tinged by sadness and regrets comes at her with a needle, murmuring "Shh, Mei Mei, hush," as though speaking to skittish horse, and then there is a prick, and he looms over her, all blue eyes and should have beens, and she fades back down into the black.